Club History is there any getting over the saga?

[RudyBlue]

Swap Cripps and Ed Curnow for Myers and Heppell on the weekend and your mob win by 5+ goals.

There's a lot of talent at your disposal, you have that one glaring hole in your list though.

 

[Howard Moon]

another way of looking at it.

Sheedy might have been our Norm Smith - and we are 10 years into the post sheedy malaise - the saga just being a part of it.

only 12 years to go if we are on the Melbourne path

 

[Doss]

another way of looking at it.

Sheedy might have been our Norm Smith - and we are 10 years into the post sheedy malaise - the saga just being a part of it.

only 12 years to go if we are on the Melbourne path

Norm Smith had just come off coaching six flags in ten seasons when he was sacked in 1965. Sheeds was cooked. I know that's not entirely the point you're making but the malaise started while Sheeds was still there. Make no mistake about that.

 

[Howard Moon]

Norm Smith had just come off coaching six flags in ten seasons when he was sacked in 1965. Sheeds was cooked. I know that's not entirely the point you're making but the malaise started while Sheeds was still there. Make no mistake about that.

There are grounds for suggestion its bad business to keep any one in charge of anything longer than say 7 years - think there are loads of examples of clubs/business/organisations/countries having times in the doldrums after a long term successful leader has gone. Maybe its why a lot of countries limit the amount of time a leader can govern.

 

[JayJ20]

another way of looking at it.

Sheedy might have been our Norm Smith - and we are 10 years into the post sheedy malaise - the saga just being a part of it.

only 12 years to go if we are on the Melbourne path

Sheedy was our Alex Ferguson. Manchester United haven't achieved anything since. Surpassed by their neighbours in almost every aspect.

 

[Mercurial89]

Makes you wonder John wanted to change the game style so we could take the next step

would that imply if we had have left it as it was, would we still be winning games but capped at the bottom half of the 8?
)

You dont have to wonder.

He and the club are on record as saying this. We could have continued playing highly offensive footy that doesnt stack up in finals. I think ant555 has been saying this in the John Worsfold thread too (forgive me Ant if I'm misquoting you).

Woosh said last year, we are launching too many attacks from half back, our pressure up the field and through the midfield is not stopping enough opposition attacks. He was saying this last year, very early, even when we were winning.

He, i think Goddard and others at the club are on record as stating we have tinkered with the way we play but every team is trying to do it. More forward half pressure. As has been mentioned all over this site, we have lazy players and a sub par midfield.

Try and ignore what the media are saying. Wheately as much as i respect him as a journalist has been one of the more heinously wrong on this topic. Having a crack at the team and coach and the gameplan. Saying that we are the ONLY club trying to do it.

We arent trying to do it, but when you get smashed out of the midfield you are going to be attacking off your back line a lot. Its very simple.

we are poor on field, we are have holes of genuine concern in our list and the fitness staff and coaching group have questions over them.

This is all unrelated to the saga and is part and parcel of being a poor football team.

 

[Howard Moon]

You dont have to wonder.

He and the club are on record as saying this. We could have continued playing highly offensive footy that doesnt stack up in finals. I think ant555 has been saying this in the John Worsfold thread too (forgive me Ant if I'm misquoting you).

Woosh said last year, we are launching too many attacks from half back, our pressure up the field and through the midfield is not stopping enough opposition attacks. He was saying this last year, very early, even when we were winning.

He, i think Goddard and others at the club are on record as stating we have tinkered with the way we play but every team is trying to do it. More forward half pressure. As has been mentioned all over this site, we have lazy players and a sub par midfield.

Try and ignore what the media are saying. Wheately as much as i respect him as a journalist has been one of the more heinously wrong on this topic. Having a crack at the team and coach and the gameplan. Saying that we are the ONLY club trying to do it.

We arent trying to do it, but when you get smashed out of the midfield you are going to be attacking off your back line a lot. Its very simple.

we are poor on field, we are have holes of genuine concern in our list and the fitness staff and coaching group have questions over them.

This is all unrelated to the saga and is part and parcel of being a poor football team.

I suppose it may have been fool hardy to tinker the set up without fixing the hole first? (unless they thought they had plugged it with stringer and devon)

if your new set up requires you to win it from he centre but that was already your Achilles heel - it may be doomed to fail

Play to your strengths as they say?

anyhow agreed, the on field is for a different place, its been discussed everywhere.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

You dont have to wonder.

He and the club are on record as saying this. We could have continued playing highly offensive footy that doesnt stack up in finals. I think ant555 has been saying this in the John Worsfold thread too (forgive me Ant if I'm misquoting you).

Woosh said last year, we are launching too many attacks from half back, our pressure up the field and through the midfield is not stopping enough opposition attacks. He was saying this last year, very early, even when we were winning.

He, i think Goddard and others at the club are on record as stating we have tinkered with the way we play but every team is trying to do it. More forward half pressure. As has been mentioned all over this site, we have lazy players and a sub par midfield.

Try and ignore what the media are saying. Wheately as much as i respect him as a journalist has been one of the more heinously wrong on this topic. Having a crack at the team and coach and the gameplan. Saying that we are the ONLY club trying to do it.

We arent trying to do it, but when you get smashed out of the midfield you are going to be attacking off your back line a lot. Its very simple.

we are poor on field, we are have holes of genuine concern in our list and the fitness staff and coaching group have questions over them.

This is all unrelated to the saga and is part and parcel of being a poor football team.

I haven't heard any of that from Worsfold this year. Where has he said all this?

 

[BrunoV]

are we bound to accept mediocre senior players who were there?

this is why its till biting us.

There are some at the club who I'd say do think that we are bound to keep them.

It's definitely not the right attitude. If it hasn't already become an excuse to accept mediocrity, it will.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

look, i'm generally an over thinker, and I sometimes sit and extrapolate things further than they need to go sometimes but I am thinking further ahead than just now. Its more about the overarching feeling within a club, not what happens on the ground. If you have an unhappy bitter club, a scorned club still not at peace with what happened its an environment that is not going to be enjoyable for new kids coming in, development has never been our strong point anyway..that the kid of things that keeps going and going unless you can somehow put a stop to it. irrespective of how s**t we were before the saga, its just another layer of stuff our club has to deal with.

like I said my style of though can not always be accurate or concise but it was just feeling I had last night when I was thinking about it

We obviously have had problems as a club, but I don't think the saga is the cause of them. It's more a symptom - a big one - than a cause.

We lost our way after the 2000 group. Sheedy and the club got arrogant I think - who could blame them, really - and stopped keeping up with the ever-changing game - something Sheedy was at the forefront of since the early 80s.

He was kept on too long, his removal and replacement was botched badly, and his imprint lasted far too long. He had too much power as an individual and "too much power" in the hands of a few continued. Evans got the main gig and gave the coaching job to his mate rather than the board and the club conducting a thorough, modern process that all currently successful clubs did.

It all blew up with the saga but I don't think it's a case of getting over it - i actually think it's what forced some changes for the better and will continue to.

We won't see an appointment like Hird again, for starters.

 

[Howard Moon]

There are some at the club who I'd say do think that we are bound to keep them.

It's definitely not the right attitude. If it hasn't already become an excuse to accept mediocrity, it will.

Further still, I reckon we may have signed people to longer term deals than what was maybe industry standard at the time due to them being involved in the saga which may end up biting us later if it already hasn't in a list management capacity

 

[BrunoV]

Further still, I reckon we may have signed people to longer term deals than what was maybe industry standard at the time due to them being involved in the saga which may end up biting us later if it already hasn't in a list management capacity

Yep. Hooker for another three years? That could really hurt if his mobility gets any worse.

He's one who I can see having a rapid decline as he become almost completely immobile.



Edit: it's not all about trading players out. As you've said, it as a lot to do with the contracts being offered and also the perceptions of the players. Do we not launch a full on assault at recruiting midfielders because of the 'All Australian' talent in our midfield?

It feels like we're forever trying to cover for the deficiencies of someone who can't run or can't defend or both. If you have no emotion connection to these players why would you bother covering for them? It doesn't make any sense.

I have a Bulldogs supporting mate who knows his stuff and, at the time it happened, he said the best thing that could have happened to the Dogs was offloading Griffen and Cooney. Sure they would still get their 30 touches a week but it was the same story of selfish football that did not fit in with what the team required and it had been a regular thing.

 

[hurlygurdy]

I think we were bound to keep the players for a few years and if that meant poor results then we had to suck it up.
I don't think anyone at the club including the players would think there is any obligation to keep those players now. Thats't done and dusted.

Regarding the OP, i kind of agree. The club has never come out and been direct about their version of events. It's a surprise and a worry. I get the feeling that there continue to be a lot of cracks painted over, all in the name of business. The financial business of the club.
I don't give a s**t whether other teams supporters think our club has lost its integrity, but i give a massive s**t about whether our own players think the club has no integrity. They sure don't seem to be able to find much to play for right now.

 

[Blind Turn]

I’m more concerned with the ‘Richmond’ trend;

- Premiership to start a decade (1980/2000)

- Runner-up shortly after while champions still kicking around
(1982/2001)

- Lose great clubmen due to terrible list management decisions in the following years trying to stay on top (RainesCloke/HardwickCaracella)

- Coleman medal winning century goal-kicker in premiership year has tail-end of career ruined by injury before retiring mid-decade (Roach/Lloyd)

- Luring back of the contemporary club legend to coach near the close of the decade only to have it go pear-shaped and leave him disgruntled with the club (Bartlett/Hird)

- Super-talented father-son key forward frustrates fans with what could be. Supporters hopes largely pinned on him taking club to the holy grail (Richo/Joe)

Perennial finishes in similar no-man’s-land position on the ladder draws ridicule amongst football followers (Ninth-mond/Elimination Final hoodoo)

The only conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that we should be celebrating our next premiership around 2037. Buckle up...

 

[ScrappyCoCo]

I think it has. Life tends to wear you down with time when things get hard for an extended period. Maybe there spirit has been broken marginally, but it takes 1% and you are behind the pack. There is no way to see it or measure it, but I bet when the players get older and wiser they will admit to how it affected them.

IMO there is no way they could have gone through that and came out the other side as strong. If it were 1 or 2 players it probably would not impact in the overall picture....but the numbers that went through it. The group have have fired their best shot post saga and there is a worn out look to the group.

 

[Phat Toni]

I don’t think our club will ever get over the supplements saga. I think we will still be crippled by it in 40 years’ time.

At first read I thought gee 40yrs is a long time really!?! But it did spark a thought that I've been grappling with for a while and that is what will this period do to the next generation of Bombers supporters? i.e the kids born from about 2005 onward. There could be a whole generation that get tarnished with the saga brush and get disillusioned to the point of supporting somebody else or turning away from AFL. I have 3 young kids and my eldest was flat out into the Bombers 3 years ago to the point he has 10 different bombers tops. Now days though I can't get him to watch a game let alone muster up enough interest to actually go to one to the point that we haven't gone as a family since we beat the Carltank in Rd 23 in 2016. Throw in the fact that most games are garbage to watch these days on top of the disgrace associated with the Saga and now the noncompetitive losing young Bombers supporters barley have a chance. My son is gone and his younger siblings will follow him, maybe we're just an isolated case as there is still plenty of young kids with Bombers tops walking around but it dose make me wonder if we're doing the reverse of cashing in on a premiership at the moment that might effect us further down the line.

 

[Mootsy]

I agree with Howard moon!

Mentally I think the players involved will psychologically struggle with it, Only I think we’ll recover by 2020, just because we have great new facilities and a relatively exciting list that just needs fine tuning. It’s not like we’re still at windy hill and behind the times.

Just need a remix of list and whatever else I guess.

 

[Howard Moon]

At first read I thought gee 40yrs is a long time really!?! But it did spark a thought that I've been grappling with for a while and that is what will this period do to the next generation of Bombers supporters? i.e the kids born from about 2005 onward. There could be a whole generation that get tarnished with the saga brush and get disillusioned to the point of supporting somebody else or turning away from AFL. I have 3 young kids and my eldest was flat out into the Bombers 3 years ago to the point he has 10 different bombers tops. Now days though I can't get him to watch a game let alone muster up enough interest to actually go to one to the point that we haven't gone as a family since we beat the Carltank in Rd 23 in 2016. Throw in the fact that most games are garbage to watch these days on top of the disgrace associated with the Saga and now the noncompetitive losing young Bombers supporters barley have a chance. My son is gone and his younger siblings will follow him, maybe we're just an isolated case as there is still plenty of young kids with Bombers tops walking around but it dose make me wonder if we're doing the reverse of cashing in on a premiership at the moment that might effect us further down the line.

I've lost one kid to his grandpas team, the other is on the edge

i'm powerless to stop it.

They are old enough to make their own choices.

 

[Phat Toni]

It's sad to watch isn't it? I'm a 3rd gen Bomber supporter and have spent countless amount of $$ on memberships/games/merch etc, the sad thing is all 3 of my kids will be gone, maybe from the game full stop, that type of thing will be the impact the saga has over the long term

 

[DERO]

I've lost one kid to his grandpas team, the other is on the edge

i'm powerless to stop it.

They are old enough to make their own choices.

My father in law is a Hawthorn supporter and he tried that stuff and I threatened to ban him from my house. He thought I was joking too!

 

[Nifft]

Disclaimer: This is not knee jerk post just because we lost to the filth and are in a bad run of losses, these sentiments have been knocking around my head for a while, maybe over a year.

Im loathe to start another saga thread but this has been needling at me.

Ill start with the grand statement:

I don’t think our club will ever get over the supplements saga. I think we will still be crippled by it in 40 years’ time.

Let me go back to last century, there were not many grand sagas to rival ours but I believe there was one that may be considered as close.

We take you back to the year 1965, Melbourne are a genuine powerhouse of the competition led by the legendary Norm Smith. The Dees had won the flag in 1955, 1957, lost in a major upset in 1958, won again in 1959, 1960 and 1964. However there was major discontent behind the scenes at Demon land. Three years prior in 1963, Norm smith called an umpire of the day “a cheat”

The umpire went ahead and sued Norm smith. Our great game had reached the courts of law.

Smith went to his club looking for support (sound familiar?) but received little, he was told, you said it, you are an experienced public figure, you can wear the costs, we cannot support you in this. Despite winning the flag in 1964, the Board were continually plotting Smiths downfall, they were scared the man had become bigger than the club, along with Smith pushing for Barassi to be cleared to Carlton the dogs were barking behind the scenes.

Midway through the following season, taking the opportunity after a few losses, the board acted and sacked their legendary coach. But they didn’t count on the backlash that would follow…

Smith appeared on the ‘footy show’ of its day and ripped into the committee, his players, the football public – no holds barred. The club was falling apart in plain view, a car crash.

The MFC board backtracked and gave him his job back. But the damage was done.

Once powerful Melbourne didn’t appear in another finals series until 1987 (22 years) and has never won another flag.

One might say they never recovered.

Football clubs are not normal business environments, they are weird places that harbour and (sometimes) prosper despite bitterness, rage, factions, power plays, emotions, outside pressures. A lot of these traits embed inside the four walls and begin to define you, they pass on through generations.

Which brings me to the next huge saga that happened in football, ours.

We were bullish, we tried exceedingly hard to make out the saga didn’t affect us, we are a big club, a strong club, we were constantly flexing our muscle to the outside world showing how quickly we had gotten back onto our feet… we didn’t stop to, for a lack of a better word, grieve – we just kept on moving forward, suppressing what had happened. You know what happens when you suppress your emotional trauma rather than addressing it? You end up with a twisted version of yourself, what manifests is something that isn’t true to itself, it’s a web of lies, an internal witches brew bubbling away– that’s where PTSD comes from.

We may have gotten on with it, but did we get over it? I think we may never get over it.

..and I don’t mean on the field, sure our list is slightly damaged and lopsided but that’s nothing a generational cycle won’t fix. Its worse, its something else that’s damaged, our entire fabric has been torn…our metaphorical arse is hanging out a huge rip in our pants yet we are strutting along not even realising it – to the mirth of many.

I just wish we would have, or still can, stop, be humble, process what happened to us and rebuilt from the ground up rather than rushing to make finals ASAP to create a narrative of a fast comeback story.

We never actually addressed the root cause of why what happened happened; why we felt the need to go that way, nup. We have been too busy looking forward, too busy redefining our brand, creating esports, or bball, or becoming a destination club. But it was all about projection – about showing the outside world we were back, rather than addressing our internal consternation and change.

Making the finals a year later was like coming out of a long term relationship hurt and jumping on the first thing we see, sure it looked good, but its never going to work unless you have fixed yourself first.

We never once addressed our demons. Just like Melbourne never did – they just took the easy way out and reinstated the boss. Look where they ended up.

Football clubs are temperamental places, little mistakes can amplify, the butterfly effect. Tank for a few years, you may get short term gains but the nominal gains are ruined by the damage it does to your overall culture for years to come.

The butterfly wings from the saga will reverberate long and hard into our future, unless we stop and actually address what happened. We need to lie back on the couch and strip everything bare, it will hurt, it will leave us bare and raw, (we should have done it while we were at out lowest ebb) but it’s the only way to move forward properly, for us.. Not for what we want to project to the rest of the footy world.

In my personal opinion we are still a broken club with major flaws behind the scenes – which eventually always transcends onto the on field. We tried too fast to move on, it hasn’t worked.

Is it too late to try again? Before you know it, it’ll be 2050 and we will be in the same malaise.

Lets not let the saga define us, but we should have used it to define a new direction. It’ll always be there, it happened – but we need to own it and use it. Here in lies the problem. I don’t think we have ever owned it, we spent so long deflecting and flexing our superclub muscle that we never even reached step one of the healing process.

Its possible we can never actually move on while the affected players and associated staff are still at the club. Herein lies the problem.

Will we be another Melbourne?

You make some interesting points. Football clubs are not normal businesses. They're a lot more emotional, and a club's culture can play a big part in how successful they are. Look at Hawthorn for example, as much as I dislike them I do admire their culture.

Has the saga damaged our culture? Created an environment where emotions have been damaged both within the club and outside with the supporters? Possibly. I can't speak for what's going on inside the club, but from the supporters I speak to there seems to be a desperate hope that the club will do well again, but we've also learned to to switch off our emotions when the club is failing. I hear some supporters saying that the saga allowed them to care less now. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, only time will tell.

It's obvious the club needs to change something right now. Is it the board, the coaches, the players? It's hard to believe the players are really this bad, so the first thing they need to address is why the players aren't playing with passion any more. I don't know how things work inside clubs at this level, but maybe the board could talk to the leadership group and try to get some honest feedback as to what's going on. This last part is a bit off topic I know, but short of burning down the whole club and starting from scratch I don't know how we'd fix the issue if the saga really did effect us in a similar way to what happened to Melbourne in the 60s.

 

[Nifft]

I've lost one kid to his grandpas team, the other is on the edge

i'm powerless to stop it.

They are old enough to make their own choices.

My son has one grandma that keeps telling him his granddad used to barrack for Hawthorn. And another grandma that's been pushing Richmond for a while now. He's stuck with Essendon, but he's never been that interested because all the kids at his school called us drug cheats the last few years.

This year though he was excited. He wanted to buy all new gear and watch the games. Unfortunately that's come to an abrupt halt given how the team's been playing. I think if the team had shown some effort and emotion on the field it would've helped him stay interested.

 

[Duckworth]

I've lost one kid to his grandpas team, the other is on the edge

i'm powerless to stop it.

They are old enough to make their own choices.

I'm with DERO, why are you concerned with the players standing up when you won't. You are far from powerless unless that is the road you choose to take.

 

[Howard Moon]

Mark Neeld has resigned effectively immediately

There's a start.

 

[Howard Moon]

I'm with DERO, why are you concerned with the players standing up when you won't. You are far from powerless unless that is the road you choose to take.

I'm happy standing, I'm firmly red and black. It's the clubs duty to make my kids want to support them, I led them there, it's their call now.